New Orleans Times-Picayune staff writer Kate Moran reports that a former prostitute who claims to have been patronized by U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has passed a lie detector test paid for by pornographer Larry Flynt and administered by polygrapher Edward Gelb of Los Angeles. It should be noted that Gelb was exposed by AntiPolygraph.org as a phony Ph.D. some four years ago. Moran writes:
Weeks after U.S. Sen. David Vitter tried to discredit her allegations, a woman who used to work as a prostitute in New Orleans passed a lie detector test averring that she had a “sexual relationship” with Vitter that lasted at least four months.
Magazine publisher Larry Flynt paid for the woman to take the polygraph test, and he plans to hold a news conference with her at his Beverly Hills office today to unveil the results and challenge the senator to submit to a polygraph.
This will make for great political theater, but polygraph results are evidence of nothing. There is broad consensus amongst scientists that polygraphy has no scientific basis. In addition, liars can easily pass the polygraph using simple, readily available countermeasures. Whether or not he’s being truthful in this matter, Senator Vitter would be well advised to steer clear of Flynt’s polygraph challenge.
The woman, Wendy Yow Ellis, claims that she had intercourse with Vitter in a French Quarter apartment at Dauphine and Dumaine streets in 1999, the year the Metairie Republican was elected to Congress.
Ellis, whose maiden name is Wendy Yow, said Monday that she took the polygraph test because Vitter tried to impugn her credibility at a news conference in July, when he denied news reports about his involvement with prostitutes in New Orleans without being specific.
“I have been called a liar all of my life,” Ellis said. “This is one time that you can’t call me a liar. I have admitted my wrongs. I am not proud of myself for my past, but my integrity and my self-respect mean more to me today than anything.”
Flynt paid for Ellis to fly to California to take the polygraph, which was administered by Edward Gelb, a past president of the American Polygraph Association who also gave lie detector tests to the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen who was found murdered in her family’s basement in 1996.
Flynt also plans to pay Ellis for divulging details of her assignations with Vitter. Those will be published in the February or March issue of Hustler, according to Mark Johnson, the magazine’s assistant managing editor and research director.
While Johnson would not say how much money Ellis could make off the deal, he said Hustler required the lie detector test to verify her story before moving forward with a contract.
‘You have to define sex’
Vitter’s press secretary refused to comment about the lie detector test Monday.
“Sen. Vitter and his wife have addressed all of this very directly,” Joel DiGrado’s statement said. “The senator is focused on important Louisiana priorities like the water resources bill and the Iraq debate.”
Gelb, the polygraph expert, asked Ellis whether she had a “sexual relationship” with Vitter through an outfit called the New Orleans Escort Service. He then asked if the relationship continued for at least four months. The polygraph showed there was “no deception intended” in her answers.
Before he gave Ellis the test, Gelb said he clarified with her that “sexual relationship” meant intercourse. Although he asked her other questions to establish a baseline for evaluating her answers, Gelb said he did not ask her any details about the relationship.
“A single-issue test is the most accurate type of polygraph test. You go to the bottom line. You do not ask whether it was in an apartment or a house, whether it was on Monday or Tuesday, unless that is germane to the bottom line,” Gelb said. “The bottom line here is that she did have sex — and you have to define sex, or you run into the problem of someone in public office discussing what the words all mean.”
During a phone interview Monday, Ellis said she met regularly with Vitter in the French Quarter apartment and that he paid her through her pimp, Jonathan, whose last name she did not know. She said Vitter met her through the New Orleans Escort Service, not through the madam whose notorious Canal Street brothel was raided by federal agents in 2001.
Although that madam, Jeanette Maier, claimed in interviews that Vitter patronized her brothel and favored a prostitute named Wendy, Ellis said Monday that she has never met Maier.
“Never had, never will, don’t care to,” she said.
Ellis said she and Vitter had safe sex and that he did not have any unusual proclivities. She said he paid $300 an hour for her services.
“He was a very clean man,” Ellis said. “He came in, took a shower, did his business and would leave.”
Apology for ‘sin’
Allegations about Vitter’s entanglement with call girls first came to light in July, when Flynt unearthed his phone number in the records of a escort service in Washington, D.C. When that news broke, Maier came forward and claimed the senator used to visit her Canal Street brothel.
That same week, Ellis spoke to The Times-Picayune and claimed that Vitter had been a regular client of hers in 1999. She has gone by several aliases over the years, and the newspaper used her Social Security number, interviews with family members and acquaintances, and public records from several states to establish her identity.
She sometimes worked under the name Wendy Cortez. An ex-boyfriend, Tait Cortez, said he and Ellis broke up after he found a provocative photo of her with Vitter, but Ellis said Monday that no photos exist. Vitter was very careful and the two never appeared together in public, she said.
Ellis’ first husband confirmed that her maiden name is Wendy Yow. Her legal name became Wendy LeeAnn Yow Ellis after she married Brannon Ellis, who is now dead.
After Maier and Ellis each claimed Vitter as a client, the senator and his wife held a news conference in which Vitter apologized a second time for the Washington allegations but denied “those New Orleans stories.” He did not specify which of the stories he was referring to and made a hasty exit without taking questions from reporters.
Vitter previously had apologized for a “very serious sin in my past” in connection with the Washington allegations.
For her part, Ellis said she took the polygraph test because it irks her that people who saw Vitter’s denial in the newspaper might see her as “a two-bit whore when I’m the one telling the truth.”
Polygraph disputes
State and federal courts do not consider polygraph tests reliable enough to be used as evidence in criminal trials, but several experts said Monday that police and the FBI use them during investigations.
“In general, polygraph test results are not admissible at trial. That is because the courts generally find the science behind the polygraph techniques not to be reliable,” said Jancy Hoeffel, an associate professor at Tulane Law School, who said attorneys nonetheless use them in pretrial hearings or to cut deals for their clients.
While Hoeffel said people fail lie detector tests for many reasons — a certain word might trigger a response — she said it is difficult for people to feign telling the truth.
“Experts in the field generally agree that results where a person has passed are more reliable than where they say a person has failed,” Hoeffel said. “You can fail a test for all kinds of innocent reasons, but to pass one is much harder. As it happens, many lawyers find them very persuasive.”
The argument that false negatives (a deceptive person passing) are less common than false positives (a truthful person failing) only applies in the absence of countermeasures. One doesn’t need to be a psychopath or somehow believe one’s own lies to fool the polygraph. See Chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 mb PDF) for a detailed explanation of how anyone can fool the polygraph.
Gelb, the polygraph expert who gave the test to Ellis, said it measures changes in pulse, blood pressure, breathing rates and other bodily changes that might indicate people are fearful their lie will be detected.
But such bodily changes are not uniquely associated with deception. They may result from a variety of factors such as fear of the consequences of not being believed, anger, embarrassment at the question asked. And such responses can be manufactured at will by those seeking to manipulate the outcome of a polygraph “test.”